The film opens on Edinburgh's streets, a cacophony of noise and colour where every other person is handing out leaflets for their show dressed in weird and wonderful costumes. Into this maelstrom steps Faith (Lyndsey Marshall), innocently wide-eyed and full of excitement as she prepares to stage her one-woman play on Dorothy Wordsworth. She meets Brother Mike (Clive Russell), a kindly but troubled man who is putting on his own one-man show about paedophile priests.

Meanwhile the judges are assembling to choose the short-list for the prestigious Comedy Award (fizzy water, anyone?). Superstar comedian Sean Sullivan (Stephen Mangan), an egocentric shag-monster, is on the panel guided there by his long suffering PA Petra (Raquel Cassidy). Sullivan immediately antagonises prickly Radio Scotland journalist Joan Gerard (Daniela Nardini) and the two snipe at each other throughout.

Sullivan, pretending he wants to go incognito but deeply offended when he is not recognised, picks up Nicky (Lucy Punch), a dizzy blonde comedian who is desperate to win the Comedy Award and not choosy about how she goes about it. Joan Gerard finds herself entangled with Irish comedian Tommy O'Dwyer (Chris O'Dowd) who is also in the running for the Award. He does not tell her he is married; she does not tell him she lives with someone. Such lies by omission are par for the Edinburgh course.

Over in the douce New Town, a severely depressed woman is renting out her immaculate, tastefully decorated home to a group of Canadian performers who proceed to treat it like an upmarket doss house. Spying on her tenants, she becomes obsessed by them.

The film builds to a climax by way of a bizarre final judging session for the Comedy Award where Joan Gerard's conscience finally gets the better of her, ending with a breathtakingly vicious but very funny set-piece at the Award ceremony.

With such a large ensemble cast it is almost inevitable that some of the stories are underdeveloped. The promising relationship between Faith and Brother Mike seems to fade away which is a pity, while the strand about the Canadians and their depressed landlady is so different in pace and tone it seems to be from another film.

‘Festival’ has an 18 certificate no doubt due to some graphic sex scenes that feel rather superfluous. The bedroom scene between Nicky and Sean Sullivan features one of the most disconcerting prosthetic (I hope) penises I have seen since the monster sported by Mark Wahlberg in ‘Boogie Nights’. And the fisting scene fair puts you off your popcorn.

Griffin, an American who started out as a performer, is a Festival veteran and it shows. The characters may be stock but Griffin handles them well and the situations feel very real, or as real as it gets in Edinburgh in August. The performances are uniformly good with Lucy Punch and Raquel Cassidy the stand-out turns. The humour is dark, biting and cruel and you can almost taste the performers' desperation. With a respectful nod to Robert Altman's ‘Nashville’, Griffin makes a confident debut in feature films. Yes, ‘Festival’ is rude and crude, but it is also that rare bird, a British film that is genuinely funny.

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Shirley Whiteside is a Glasgow-based freelance writer who has contributed to The Herald, Herald Magazine, The List and the Scottish Daily Mail. She has also worked as a film/tv publicist on a variety of projects including Orphans, Mrs Brown, The Crow Road, Cardiac Arrest, Takin' Over The Asylum, Small Faces, Ex-S and Bookmark. She is currently working on short screenplays and short stories.

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© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.